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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25102123">believe you hold the answers</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/forsyte/pseuds/forsyte'>forsyte</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon, Canon-Typical Behavior, Complicated Relationships, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Season/Series 04, Stress Preening/Plucking, Wing Grooming, Wingfic, h/c Of A Sort that is</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 06:36:12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,061</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25102123</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/forsyte/pseuds/forsyte</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Please,” it says. Its voice is soft as a lie in the morning. “Melanie isn’t here anymore, and I can’t fix these.”<br/>--<br/>Helen's having trouble preening. Jonathan does not particularly <i>want</i> to help.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Helen | The Distortion/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Wingfic Exchange June 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>believe you hold the answers</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/dramatispersonae/gifts">dramatispersonae</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p><i>Do you know the mess you've made?<br/>You believe you hold the answers,<br/>but your feathers are all frayed</i><br/>"Icarus," Emma Blackery</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The thing that hangs about in the tunnels manifestly isn’t Helen. It’s stolen her face, hollowed it out and devoured it, and now it smiles from impossible doorways like it’s not a monster in real estate agent’s clothing. Jon cannot stand to look at it. (Can’t bear to be reminded of how he can’t do a single thing about this.) Given these parameters, he’s not surprised that it seems to like him. Just the way his luck goes. </p><p>“What do you want,” he says, when he hears the creak of a hatefully familiar door behind him. He is tired as ever, and viciously hungry, and not in the mood. </p><p>“I could use your help,” it has the audacity to tell him. </p><p>Her—its wings. Helen’s weren’t dull to begin with—a striking yellow-and-black, the first pair in a while that he’d seen that were anything like Martin’s, and he’s grimly sure that offhand correlation is the only reason he remembers what they used to be like—but these days the harsh fluorescent light in most of the archives sparks off them in scintillating patterns, a rainbow that hurts ever-so-slightly to look at even as it draws the eye.</p><p>Something’s wrong with them today. Several of the feathers are crooked, two flight feathers are missing entirely, and the wings droop as if weighed down, ragged as a nightmare and bereft of their usual sheen. Helen’s always kept them neat, he thinks, or— every time he’s seen this face of the Distortion, it’s been well-groomed. All the better to lure in victims, he supposes, bitterly. </p><p>“Please,” it says. Its voice is soft as a lie in the morning. “Melanie isn’t here anymore, and I can’t fix these.”</p><p>His first impulse is to scoff. Spit out his refusal and turn back around, go back to his paperwork—with all that’s happened it seems absurd that he still fills out paperwork, as though he’s got a normal position in an office that doesn’t eat people’s fear—and roundly ignore it. His second impulse, lingering, is the raw urge to tear it down, confront its rank falsehood—he is so <em> tired </em> of being <em> lied </em>to—and hopefully drive it away again. If he’s lucky it might not bother him again. (His luck isn’t that good.) </p><p>On the heels of these two warring thoughts comes a traitorous question: <em> what do they feel like? </em>What could he expect, really? The Distortion is a strange thing, beguiling, aggravating. A spiral where there should be a straight line, a thorn in his side. In all probability, it would be—his fingers itch—a new experience. </p><p>He shouldn’t be half as curious as he is. Shouldn’t encourage the thing growing in him. He opens his mouth to tell it to go away. </p><p>What slinks out of his mouth, unthinkingly, is “<em> How did this happen? </em>”</p><p>“It’s difficult to preen these days,” it answers unerringly, and then the planes of it seem to waver, in—</p><p>“That was <em> rude, </em> Archivist.”</p><p>—irritation. Figures, that even Helen can’t stand him like this. He resigns himself to that being the last of its request, ignores the sinking feeling and the stretching longing that still wrap themselves around the idea in his mind, and waits for it to disappear. </p><p>It doesn’t. The opposite; he doesn’t see it move, but it seems to be closer, abruptly, its feathers brushing the floor near its feet. Dust whirls in odd patterns in the light his single lamp casts across his office, swirling in far tighter spirals than it should. </p><p>He clears his throat. “Why…” The feathers shift and sharpen. No, that won’t do him any good. “You’re asking me for help.” </p><p>“Yes,” it says. “Melanie is elsewhere, I said.” </p><p>“Melanie,” he says, stupidly, but— it almost makes sense. Melanie’s hands know—knew—their way around a knife, and if he can tries he can see them trailing through iridescent shards careful not to cut herself, straightening crooked shafts, fingers lightly coated in mineral oil—<em> mineral oil? </em>Used for sharpening. That makes a strange kind of sense, actually—</p><p>Pain bursts behind his eyes, flares up through his guts and he realizes, with a pang of reluctant regret, what he’s doing. Not seeing, but Seeing, peering at moments he shouldn’t be privy to like waltzing into someone’s house and rummaging through their bedside drawers. He casts around for something else to do. Tries to figure out how to extricate himself from this.</p><p>“Do you… that is.” He can’t quite think around this one through the twisting hunger he’s doing his best to ignore, and says, finally, “Preening needs oil.” Inane, but free of compulsion, and acknowledging the awkward reality of the situation. He half-hopes she’ll say there’s none.</p><p>“I have my own,” says Helen.</p><p>“Well,” he says, and then can’t find anything else to say. Helen perches on his desk, one leg crossed primly over the other, and his objections seem to slide away, water on oil, looking at her — looking at it. It’s a monster, through and through, a walking magic eye picture—from one angle, the person he couldn’t save. From another, mirrors and teeth. He wonders when he'll look like that. Wonders if he already does, to the people who dream of him. </p><p>The sensible dress she wears leaves her oil glands accessible, but she places a small bottle on his desk before he can touch—</p><p>it. Before he can touch it, forestalling his hands midair. He knows without reading the label that it's the same oil Melanie warmed in her hands, the first day and every day after, scarce as they were, that she did this. The first time was clumsy, and she bled when she didn't think to take her time. The second time— </p><p>He grits his teeth against the unwanted onslaught, pours oil into the palm of his hand and spreads it across his fingers. He tries to remember the last time he did this for someone—had it been Georgie? She'd been the first person after his adult molt he'd preened, her dark wings wide and difficult for her to reach on her own, and she'd curled against him afterwards. Or—no, Daisy had asked him, when they could both stand to move, her iridescent green feathers gleaming from limbs no longer strong enough to support her in flight. It'd been after the coffin, and she hadn't asked since. Martin hadn't ever asked, though Jon'd thought, irritably, about offering the handful of times he'd seen the man's rumpled feathers early mornings in the Archives, when Prentiss had them under siege. It wouldn't have been professional, and so he didn't. He almost wishes—well. No sense thinking about it now. He tries, without much success, to stop the discouragingly sparse reel of times he's touched another human being's wings in his life from playing in his head, and with that unhappy thought reaches for Helen's plumage.</p><p>And promptly cuts himself. It stings, but knits back up without much fuss, shrinking to a zigzag line that lingers for another second and then vanishes completely. Slower than it is when he's ...fed, he notices without particularly wanting to. He supposes that makes sense. The entities don't seem to be big on conservation of mass, but there's still <em> some </em> laws governing his existence. Pity they work the way they do. He shakes it off, peers at the wing critically and raises a hand, more carefully this time, to realign its coverts. They feel nothing like how feathers should, more like wet clingy plastic, and they're harder to move and stick closer together than they should. The disparate sensations, taken as a whole, should add up to a discomfort, another negative situation endured in pursuit of knowledge, but there's another element to it, a complication (with the Distortion, when <em> isn't </em>there), and it sits uneasily in him—the variable of Helen, or something that looks very much like her and perhaps in part used to be her, quiescent under his hands, and how that changes things, when it shouldn't. He shouldn't want to help, shouldn't—shouldn't miss this like he does. It figures that he can't so much as preen someone these days without that someone having been eaten by a hallway and regurgitated as a shell of their former self beforehand.</p><p>It’s stupid, what he’s doing. If he had any sense at all he wouldn’t be trying to help her, wouldn’t have let whatever misplaced emotion he has towards the nightmare sitting in his office guide his hands like this. He smooths out another feather, and the timbre of the grating static he’s just now noticed changes keys, becomes—not <em> soothing </em>, but perhaps more pleasantly discordant. </p><p> If he couldn’t do anything for Helen Richardson, if he can’t do anything for his coworkers—for the people he feeds on—he can at least do this. Hunger weighs his tongue down, sticks his parched lips together. He ignores it, carefully separates two primaries stuck together through some process best left unknown and pinches the frayed barbs back into shape with his nails til the plumes adhere again. He’s not sure why it works when Helen’s feathers are so obviously feathers in name only. She’s the door and the halls and the person all at once, he supposes, and that’s not quite an answer but it’s enough to stop him from opening his mouth and letting the questions roll off his tongue until she is Known to him or until she leaves him flayed on the carpet. He’s not sure that’s a point in the thought’s favor. Either way, the world would be down a monster.</p><p>Finished with her flight feathers, he moves onto the softer marginal coverts. They feel like candy floss, a kind of sticky clinginess which he is half-convinced will dissolve under his oily hands. It is deeply unpleasant, and it does not stop him for a moment, though his face begins to ache from twisting into a grimace. He wipes his hands on his trousers, reflexively, leaving greasy smears behind and doing absolutely nothing to alleviate the sticky feeling on his hands. Helen giggles, not sympathetic in the slightest. You’d think he wasn’t doing her a favor. </p><p>“Having trouble?”</p><p>“You could have warned me,” he says, eyes on his work. There’s something caught in the feathers, a mass of them twisted up and tangled somehow, and he tugs at it carefully. It’s—actually tacky, he thinks with some surprise, not the fake-sugary not-residue of its surroundings, caked in a truly awful iridescent liquid which smells like petrol and acts like honey. He pours more oil on his hands, cracks his neck, and sifts through it, resigned by now to the challenge of finding whatever the hell’s at the middle of the hideous mess—and there <em> is </em>an object at the heart of it, he can tell, and he’s going to pull it out if he has to tear these feathers off with his hands. </p><p><em>“Careful,” </em>Helen hisses, the jangling static that surrounds her abruptly a tangible thing, and he slows. </p><p>“You have something caught in here,” he says. “If you can free it without ripping out plumage, by all means, be my guest.” </p><p>“In a manner of speaking, I already am,” she says, and reaches back, and keeps reaching, her arm folding around in a way only possible with another foot of length and an extra elbow. “Oh, I was wondering where I’d been keeping that.”</p><p>“Wha—” he starts, and then almost gags on an exceedingly pointy finger that presses down on his tongue, silencing him. </p><p>“Never you mind.” Her needlefingers part the mass easily, and the liquid slides off of them. Naturally. The thing she retrieves is an unimpressive sodden lump, heavily folded and creased. He leans around, unobtrusively, to see it. Catches a glimpse of a piece of paper being unfurled, revealing a network of overlapping lines in hypnotic fractals, and for a moment he is dazzled but if he looks closer, if he can just <em> See </em>—  </p><p>She pops it in her mouth, and the static is overlaid with the sound of wet paper being run through a shredder as she chews. </p><p>“What,” he starts, and then discards at least three separate endings to that sentence. </p><p>“A map,” she answers, though he hasn’t yet asked. “You can have that one for free. You’d find it no use for navigating anymore. It’s been in the corridors for rather too long.”</p><p>“If you can reach something in your feathers that easily…”</p><p>“Why did I ask you for help?” She twists around, or at least she twists her head 176 degrees, to face him. “Harder for me to mend things, I’m afraid. You still have hands.” </p><p>He does, though the scar tissue makes a mockery of his left. “Don’t you?” he asks, and winces at the static. </p><p>“Of a sort,” she replies, and holds her hand out to him. Tentatively, he grasps it. On some level he knows what it looks like—a handshake, completely normal, because currently Helen appears to be an utterly mundanely cheerful real estate agent. He thinks, all of a sudden, of—a description, of Michael’s hands, as <em> like a wet leather bag full of heavy stones, </em>though he can’t recall the context. Helen’s hand in his feels slithery and oddly mushy, like cottage cheese in snakeskin, and full of needles. He pulls back in a hurry, and she laughs at him, a sound that overlaps itself like a Möbius strip and sets an ocean to pressing against the inside of his sinuses. </p><p><em>“Please </em>stop,” he says helplessly, holding his head in his hands. It’s too much. Everything’s too much, all at once, the light, the hunger, the ache in every one of his joints, the cramped curl of his burned hand, the fatigue compounded a thousand times over by Helen’s laughter making a tureen of fibreglass splinters out of his head, abrasive and awful. He breathes in, slowly, shakily. The pain remains, as it always does. He divides it, as much as he can, feeling the palms of his hands prickle unpleasantly, his hunger—he stuffs that one down, hating himself viscerally for wanting so badly to feed—and the sleep deprivation that pulls his eyelids down, chains concrete to his bones. Breathes out, grinds the heels of his hands into his closed eyes and digs his fingers into his skull, welcomes the relief the pressure brings even as it sends a fresh twinge through his burn scars. Second by excruciating second, he drags himself back to the brink of functioning. Scrubs his hands off on his trousers, compulsively. </p><p>Helen had stopped laughing at some point, he notices, and looking up at her—seemingly caught between leaning towards and away from him, an expression somewhat like concern on her face—she seems to be, if not worried for him, at least worried at him. Because of him. He’s not sure how to tell the difference. </p><p>Belatedly, he realizes—”Give me a bit, I’ll be fine,” he says, distractedly. “I’ll finish, I just—” he breaks off, waves vaguely at himself as if that’s any kind of coherent explanation, and maybe it is, because Helen nods. Or maybe the avatar of confusion doesn’t need him to be explicit. For all he knows, she loves watching him like this, miserable and in a downward—hah—spiral. </p><p>  Searching his desk nets him a pair of disposable gloves. A half-measure at best and questionably useful as a barrier between his skin and the hellish sensory… experiences that compose Helen, but better than nothing, and he slides them on gingerly and shakes his hands out, testing. They’ll do, he decides, and reaches once again for the mineral oil, coats the gloves, and starts in on her other wing. It doesn’t look too difficult, and he’s hopeful he can get this one done and—<em> hell, </em>he’s tired, and he doesn’t particularly want to sleep but he’s not sure he has a choice at this point. </p><p>He smooths out a missing primary, wonders if this is a molt or if Helen’s damaged herself past illusion, and if so what would have caused it. Under what circumstances is the Distortion harmed? It doesn’t seem to enjoy compulsion, that much is clear. As he brushes past it a primary covert detaches, falls in lazy swoops and arcs to the floor and then seems to—vanish? No, that’s too peaceful a word for it; it <em> glitches </em> out of existence. It looked worn, he thinks, and examination of the empty space it left behind reveals no particular trauma. He massages the site experimentally, and Helen shivers all over, wings riffling under his hands. <em> Not </em>in pain. </p><p>He swallows, mouth dry and skin prickling. Part of him considers stopping, backing away from the uncomfortable intimacy, but—in for a penny, in for a pound, and he wanted to know what the Distortion’s wings were like, and if he gets more than he bargained for then he shouldn’t have bargained in the first place. Decided, he lets his fingers sink into her marginal plumage, which feels, if not strictly <em> correct, </em>then at least composed of the right phase of matter now, and scratches, the same as he would for his own molt.</p><p>Her—<em> its </em> reaction is dramatic. The thing that issues a chirr made of metal fatigue from at least four throats, if his ears can be trusted, is not Helen Richardson in the <em> slightest, </em>nothing human and barely anything vertebrate about the contortion it arranges into. He is not brave; the air around them is thick with confusion; if he had any sense at all he would stop. If he had any sense at all he wouldn’t have started.</p><p>He is curious and hungry and with his fear comes the barest sense of satiation, and his hands are buried in down-soft somethingness, and he stays where he is, smoothing feathers back into place and removing strays, shaking fluff off his oily gloves, and as he works Helen-the-remnant sags like a decaying house, eyelids fluttering down over the abalone gleam of its irises. He feels caught—in a book, not a trap, occasional similarities between those two categories aside. The task is meditative, and rewarding, and so he works, and when he is nearly done he finds himself, ridiculously, hesitating, holding back, picking at stray barbs and fussing over the arrangement of her secondaries. Her wings have a hint of their old slick gloss creeping back in around the edges, quicksilver over stained glass, and they’re far from perfect but he has completed the task he set out to do. He indulges himself for the span of another moment, two, idle hands lingering, stroking down the sleek shafts for no purpose other than to touch, and then he is stepping back and stripping his gloves off, throwing them in the rubbish bin and trying to feel anything other than peculiarly lost, a puppet with its strings cut. (Wrong choice of words. He did this, he chose to do this.)</p><p>Helen hasn’t moved. He’s not sure she’s breathing. Apart from her eerie stillness and the subtly unsettling quality of the light glinting off her wings, still half-spread, she could be human again, and oddly vulnerable at that, with her head tipped to the side, her tissue-thin eyelids closed and throat left unprotected. Her lips are parted; she is barefoot. He is unsure why these are the things he notices, whether his eyes are the conduit for the horrorterror he feeds or whether these details are his own to hoard. Why for the breadth of a moment he is breathless.</p><p>And then she opens her eyes and stares right back at him, mad and alien, kaleidoscope irises and pinwheels for pupils, and the illusion shatters. What is left of her is no longer human enough to matter, and certainly nothing he should give weight to. He remembers, fleetingly, a gray winter morning and the smell of sizzling flesh, pale scars and ozone, and curses himself. He’s never learned his lesson about monsters. </p><p>“Thank you, Jon,” she says, quiet, almost sincere, before she smiles wide and blinding-bright and obliterates any fraction of an impression that she’s being genuine. “I enjoyed it ever so much. I’d offer to return the favor, but that would be rather logistically difficult and, besides,” she peers critically at his wings, then straightens up with a sound of amusement like nails on a chalkboard, “you seem to have that <em> quite </em>covered!” </p><p>“I didn’t ask,” he grits out before he can think better of it, hands clasped together tight and indignation flaring hotly in his chest. His wings are visibly patchy, he knows; his (pennatillomania, askesis, <em> call it what it is) </em>neurotic tendency to tear out his own plumage has been a problem his whole life and now that he’s starving it’s worse. He so much as stares off into midair and he comes back to himself minutes later, surrounded in a halo of feathers. Fast as they grow, it’s not nearly fast enough to keep up with his habits. </p><p>“You didn’t have to!” she trills. “Really, Jon, how long are you going to try and keep this up? It’s amazing that you’re still trying, but you’re <em> really </em>running yourself ragged.” </p><p>“I don’t want to—”</p><p>“If you say so,” she says, grinning like it’s the funniest joke in the world. “You don’t have to swear off <em> everything, </em>you know. Just skim a little fear off the top. What’s the harm in having a snack now and again?” She winks. “I’ve certainly appreciated mine, thank you for that.” </p><p>“You’ve—excuse me?” But in a blink she’s gone, her green glass door shutting indelicately behind her and then never having been there in the first place, leaving Jon with a splitting headache and faintly oily hands as the only souvenirs of her visit. </p><p>He’s distantly surprised to find that she can still hurt him, to put the name <em> betrayal </em>to the pang, hard as a fist through glass, in his chest. He thought, when she came to him—</p><p>
  <em>(Asking a small favor of someone results in increased goodwill towards the asker.) </em>
</p><p>Michael called itself <em>the throat of falsehood. </em>Had he really thought that, given one statement and proximity, she’d be any different? Had he trusted her, believed her when she said she wanted to <em>help? </em>He massages the bridge of his nose. Stares at the papers scattered across his desk without really seeing them and then gives up and slumps back down into his chair. He brushes the paperwork aside, gently thunks his head against the wood, reassuringly cool and solid.<br/>
He’s still on the clock, probably, for whatever that’s even worth anymore. Shouldn’t be letting himself slack off. Needs to finish filling out the requisition form for <em>another damn laptop, </em>since the bloody things never hold up to eldritch interference. <em>(Spooky interference, </em>a voice says in the back of his mind, one he hasn’t heard in a long time, and it comes with a flash of a mocking hand waggle for good measure. He shoves it away mercilessly, blinking hard, and lets himself chalk it up to sleep deprivation.) Tasks don’t stop requiring completion just because he’s not in the mood. </p><p>He repeats this all to himself, and adds some more beration for good measure, but gives it up as a bad job when lifting his head the barest distance nets him an ice pick through his skull. One-handed, he fumbles with his desk drawers til he finds the painkillers, swallows two dry, and huddles wretchedly. He can stay like this until they start working. Just until he doesn’t hurt anymore, and then he can get back to puzzling out what to put down on the “Cause” section of the requisition form…</p><p>He’s so tired. </p><p> </p><p>(An hour later he’s breathing slowly and steadily, dead to the world. He barely stirs at the creak of a door opening behind him, to say nothing of the quiet tut of disapproval that comes along with it. His face is creased, skin pulled tight over his sharp edges. He looks as if a strong wind would blow him away. </p><p>When a heavy knitted blanket is draped over him, he sighs, weary even at rest, and slumps into a marginally less uncomfortable position. </p><p>“Sleep well,” he is told, though he is not awake to hear.)</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>relevant wings<br/>martin (mentioned): european goldfinch <br/>helen richardson: ...weaverbird, i think?<br/>helen: ? <br/>and for a bonus, jon's are long-eared owl wings, though i didn't describe them here.</p><p>i wrote this in four days a week after surgery yee fuckin haw<br/>quote your favorite line in the comments section below, or drop neat facts about poison into my <a href="https://morguecrow.tumblr.com/ask">ask box</a> on tumblr. that is absolutely not a joke hit me up with weird facts anytime</p></blockquote></div></div>
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